February 04, 2011

The Leftovers | Freezing Egg Whites, Ideas in Food, and Products to Try

Over the past month, we've run into a handful of tips, books and products that caught our eye. Here's a round-up of The Leftovers.

The Martha Stewart Living January issue was not only slightly revamped (it has five new features, including a new take on its long-running calendar and a new monthly "Make and Give" feature), it also featured two tips that we really loved.

The first was that if you're separating a bunch of eggs, you can crack them into a colander, and the whites will slip right through the colander's holes. If you're not concerned with keeping the egg whites, this sounds like an easy way to quickly separate a large quantity of eggs.

That said, we've often found ourselves separating eggs and discarding the egg whites, uncertain if they can be saved. Turns out, they can be frozen! In another tip about freezing leftovers, the MSL editors share a tip to freeze leftover egg whites, wine, chicken stock and juices in ice cube trays for later use. We've often frozen chicken stock, and we recently started to do this with leftover buttermilk. There's rarely leftover wine at our house (whoops!) but we hadn't before considered freezing egg whites. Have you done it? Let us know how it turned out.

New Books: Ideas in Food and Power Foods

There are two new food-related books that we've read over the last month and really enjoyed.

We've previously recommended Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, which focuses on the basic ratios of cooking. Ideas in Food goes one step beyond that to focus not only on why certain combinations are successful, but how you can bring truly unique ideas to old recipes.

Some of these ideas are unlike any others we've read before. Some of our favorites include how to make a Vanilla Salt for flavoring dishes, making your own Maple Vinegar, or Smoked Pasta Dough. One recipe we're especially enamored with is the one for Crispy Chocolate Mousse, which is baked for five hours at low temperature in order to achieve a mouse that has the texture of brownie edges.

The second half of the book is interesting but gets a little sciencey for us, as it focuses on more advanced techniques using items like Xanthan gum and carbon dioxide that we don't see ourselves using in our kitchen. Still though, it's interesting to learn why and how they're used.

We also recommend Power Foods: 150 Delicious Recipes with the 38 Healthiest Ingredients, by the editors of Whole Living Magazine (it's a Martha Stewart publication, if you're not familiar). This beautiful book's photographs were the first thing that caught our eye -- they're bright and each one makes you want to get to cooking. But we also love the approach, right from the introduction's "golden rules" that offer 10 tips to keep in mind that will help your family eat healthier.

Some of the "38 healthiest ingredients" are already likely staples in your house, but some are items we've never or rarely had in our kitchen, like papaya, flaxseed, and quinoa.

We always look forward to the Saveur 100 annual issue (which is, by the way, still available on newsstands) because we typically find loads of items we're interested in eating, reading or visiting. This year's issue -- featuring suggestions from chefs around the country -- is no exception, but two products really caught our attention that we want to try.

The first is Kozlik's Triple Crunch Mustard (picture right, photo from Saveur).

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The Leftovers | Freezing Egg Whites, Ideas in Food, and Products to Try

Over the past month, we've run into a handful of tips, books and products that caught our eye. Here's a round-up of The Leftovers.

The Martha Stewart Living January issue was not only slightly revamped (it has five new features, including a new take on its long-running calendar and a new monthly "Make and Give" feature), it also featured two tips that we really loved.

The first was that if you're separating a bunch of eggs, you can crack them into a colander, and the whites will slip right through the colander's holes. If you're not concerned with keeping the egg whites, this sounds like an easy way to quickly separate a large quantity of eggs.

That said, we've often found ourselves separating eggs and discarding the egg whites, uncertain if they can be saved. Turns out, they can be frozen! In another tip about freezing leftovers, the MSL editors share a tip to freeze leftover egg whites, wine, chicken stock and juices in ice cube trays for later use. We've often frozen chicken stock, and we recently started to do this with leftover buttermilk. There's rarely leftover wine at our house (whoops!) but we hadn't before considered freezing egg whites. Have you done it? Let us know how it turned out.